ENGLAND—A bottle of whisky in London is about as rare as a summer day. The controlled price is 25 shillings ($6), but if you haven’t known the shopkeeper for 10 years you will be lucky if he even lets you smell the cork. The only other source is through phony retailers, who charge anywhere from four to five pounds ($16 to $20).
That makes the actions of one second lieutenant either screwy or just plain American. He walked into a bar and asked to buy a bottle of Scotch. The proprietor, in a hands-across-the-sea mood, took down a bottle from his tightly rationed stock and offered it to him for 25 shillings.
“No, no,” the lieutenant said. “I want some real whisky, the kind that’s sold for five pounds.”
An American airman of the Eighth Air Force and a US Navy Sailor celebrate VE-Day in London’s Piccadilly Square after the announcement of Germany’s surrender